


The Confessional

by A_Stressed_Cupcake



Series: The Brotherhood of the Dark Kingdom [4]
Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I am going to make the Broterhood a character tag by myself if I have to, I swear, Lots of it, Missing Scene, These tags are going to burn my eyes, all of them - Freeform, bad at feelings, he's not dead but they don't know that, sibling relationships, this story has been sitting there incomplete for a while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23083051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Stressed_Cupcake/pseuds/A_Stressed_Cupcake
Summary: We know Adira paid Quirin a visit.I kind of implied Hector did the same.This is that fic.
Relationships: Adira & Hector & Quirin (Disney: Tangled), Quirin & Varian (Disney), The Brotherhood - Relationship
Series: The Brotherhood of the Dark Kingdom [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653301
Comments: 31
Kudos: 75





	1. Adira

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firefly_skies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefly_skies/gifts).



> Everyone congratulate @firefly_skies, it's not their birthday they're just that cool :3  
> And they accidentally inspired me to finish the fic that's been sitting in my docs since before season 3.  
> So everyone thank them.

Apparently there  _ was _ something more resilient than the black rocks. 

An interesting fact, but she would have honestly preferred to find out elsewhere, at a different time, in a completely different context.

She stared with barely contained disdain at the massive block in front of her. A veritable mountain of amber, whose sickly yellow vines stretched all the way to the ceiling of the lab. The place was a mess. It was still half destroyed by the battle. Papers, bent daggers, broken swords and shattered objects of various shape, size and material were scattered across the floor. Clearly, she hadn't been the first to attempt to break the amber.

Adira focused her gaze on a spot at the base of the mound. It looked somewhat thin compared to the rest. A weak spot. 

She propped herself on her right foot, ready to transfer all the weight to the left, which waited patiently in front of its twin. The sword was heavy, because it had always been. It was a weight she had grown used to, an almost comforting weight on her back that reminded her that  _ she was not unarmed _ . She carried the symbol of her greatest pride and skill on her shoulders; as long as she had it, no harm would come to her.

She breathed deeply.

_ Make every strike count _ , a nice knight with curly dark hair had told her once. He'd been one of the first people to see potential in her. Two months later, he was dead, killed by a particularly unstable criminal he'd been sent to capture.

_ Swing _ .

The sword clashed with the amber and her wrist exploded with pain.

"Agh-" she hissed, leaving the weight of the sword to her uninjured arm. 

The amber was intact.

Not even a crack.

Not even a tiny chip off its gleaming surface (though it looked so fragile, like coloured glass.)

Adira knew defeat when she saw it.

Fifteen minutes of various attempts with the toughest object in her possession had yielded no results, safe for frustration and a sprained wrist (thankfully, it was the left). Looking at the rest of the laboratory, she knew that  _ everything _ in their power had been attempted.

There was nothing left to do.

She sat rigidly next to the mountain of amber, without looking at it. It was no use looking at it.

It was no use being there at all, technically, but the house felt so cold. Too cold. There was meant to be someone in that lab and there just wasn't. 

It was silent. No voices, no footsteps, no clinks of glass vials, no gurgling of heated chemical solutions, no quiet hiss of gas burners. A place like that wasn't  _ meant _ to be quiet. 

So she spoke up.

"I did what I could." she said. Not shouting or whispering, just speaking. No one was there to hear, so what was the point of doing either of those things?

As soon as the echo of her words died down, the laboratory went silent again. 

"I did everything I could." she repeated, "It looks like you're going to be in there for a while longer."

It was a little disturbing to her how  _ easy _ it was for her to pretend he was actually hearing her. 

"How did this even happen? I didn't quite understand that part. And you were always so careful; how could you let this happen to you? What went down here?" 

She didn't turn around and he didn't answer. Of course.

"The boy with the blue stripe in his hair." she started, "That's your son, isn't it? This lab is his."

She caught the beginning of a smile forming on her face: "Of course it is. You were never a fan of chemistry. And those gloves look way too small for you."

She closed her eyes to block out that sickly yellow shine: "I don't know why I'm telling you this. I don't think you can hear me. You know, when… when I heard a rumour you were in trouble, this is… not what I was expecting, I'll admit. For the life of me, Quirin, I can't figure out how you managed to get into this kind of trouble."

Something like a giggle bubbled up in her chest, but it never came out. It was bitter and ironic anyway, so it was no big loss, but still.

"There is really only one explanation that comes to mind."

She sighed.

"It was Goggles there, wasn't it? Messing around where he shouldn't have? Reminds me of someone. You don't do chemistry and you don't throw yourself in the line of fire unless it's for someone else, so..."

She was feeling calm, and then she wasn't. The frustration of speaking to someone who could not answer her (nor hear her, most likely) began to twist and stab at her gut. She had always been taught to channel anger. Find a target to work towards.

But sorrow and grief were not always rational and rarely productive. Her mind wasn't as blank as she would have liked. It raced and pushed and screeched in her ears in the silence of the lab, shoving against her skull to escape. Scratch. Crack. Scream.

It couldn't escape.

She wouldn't let it.

She stood up, but didn't turn around.

"Speaking of which, he's… fine. He wasn't hurt. I thought you should know that, just in case." 

Technically not a lie. The kid looked physically unharmed. 

She really didn't know why she was speaking to him. There were at least a few metres of indestructible amber separating them, and it wasn't like he could read her lips. Did he have any air in there? Was he even alive? 

That was debatable. More specifically, in a debate she'd rather not have. 

Still, in the off-chance he  _ could  _ hear what she was saying, there were a few important points to bring up. Firstly, she was  _ not  _ going to tell him exactly what had happened. She was also not going to be the one to break it to him that his son was in jail, because he couldn't do anything about it and she wasn't going to babysit a potentially unstable teenager indefinitely (on top of searching for some people who likely wanted nothing to do with said teenager), so it would have been outright cruel to tell him like that.

And lastly...

"I hope we see each other again. With less… animosity, this time. In case we don't…"

She finally turned around. 

"In case we don't, it was good meeting you. I’m sorry about how we left off."

She walked away. In the clash of her sword against the amber, she hadn’t heard the quiet sound of one her earrings falling to the floor under the table.

And then she was gone, and it was silent again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Logical brain: Adira has mismatched earrings because it looks cool.
> 
> Some ungodly part of my goblin brain: She lost one earring but still kinda wanted to keep the other.
> 
> I am writing the sequel to Last Attempt but for some of it to make sense I have to publish a couple separate fics first.
> 
> To Firefly... uhhhhhhhhhhh SURPRISE!! Because it was about time I gave the younger siblings some love :D  
> I don't have much to say except I LOVE THESE THREE but come on you knew that part.
> 
> Leave a comment because I love y'all?
> 
> See ya next time :3
> 
> -Cass


	2. Hector

Silence, true silence, was not exactly familiar to Hector. Ideally, he was never around other people but, ideally, he was never alone, either. People irked him, generally. They were complicated, sensitive, demanding. They could lie. 

Animals, however… they weren't so bad. 

Animals were complex in their own way, without all the drama that human beings inevitably came with. No screaming matches, no reading between the lines, no betrayal ever.

Better than humans, in every way.

But also incredibly noisy sometimes. Even when the dogs weren't barking, even when the tigers weren't growling and the horses weren't neighing, they still made more noise than people just by breathing with their mighty lungs. That constant, rhythmic sound accompanied him everywhere he went. 

In that lab, though, there  _ was _ no breathing.

Nothing living. Not that he could see.

Just cold and silence and dust and the biggest, weirdest block of amber he had ever seen in his life, and he had seen some things. There was not a single part of what he was seeing, hearing and feeling that was familiar to him. The yellow glow was nothing like the sun. The stone walls were old and sterile; they didn't feel alive like the walls of the caves he was used to. And dust was meant to blow in his face with the wind, not slowly set on the furniture of the abandoned laboratory.

He passed a finger on the table and it came away covered in thin grey dust. Disgusting.

Everything was unfamiliar. His brother was no exception.

He looked older and more tired and scared, like he hadn't seen him in years. But mostly tired. There was something else about him, but it was hard to tell with the frankly ridiculous barrier that stood between them. Hector had never seen such nonsense.

It didn’t feel real.

“She wasn’t lying.” he mumbled, trying to make out the words scrawled out on a half-burnt piece of paper. The handwriting didn’t look familiar, and he didn’t recognize a single word of it, aside from  _ add water _ . 

He briefly pondered a few options. Leaving, for example. 

He looked up.

Amber was not an uncommon material, at all. But this was different. It was harder by far than its ordinary counterpart, it stretched out in spikes and vines. It was alive, but it wasn't living.

_ Unnatural _ . The word he was looking for was  _ unnatural _ .  _ Parasitic _ , maybe _. _

"What a mess." he commented, under his breath. And it was. Scattered papers, chemical burns on the furniture, shattered glass all over the floor… it looked like  _ someone  _ had had a meltdown in there. 

"It looks like  _ you're _ the one who's in trouble this time." he scoffed, "That's rare. Was no one there to stop you? Did no one tell you  _ don't do that, that's a bad idea _ ?"

He kicked a shard of glass away. It struck the base of the mountain and shattered into tiny, insignificant fragments on impact. The voice in the back of his mind, saying  _ don't kick glass, you're going to hurt yourself _ , didn't sound like his own voice. It sounded like someone else's, which was funny, because said  _ someone else  _ was currently unable to speak at all, and how persistent did someone have to be to still speak so clearly in his mind when they couldn’t talk in his ears?

It was both impressive and annoying, quite frankly.

Something rose in his gut. Frustration. Maybe anger.

“I mean, seriously!” he exclaimed, making a start toward the amber before changing his mind and stopping dead in his tracks: “How did you manage to get stuck in there? How in the-”

He blew out a burst of hot and angry air through his nose. 

And then, the same thing happened that always happened. He said something he didn’t mean.

“It’s your own fault. That’s it. That’s how it happened, because-”

He paused. 

“Because that’s the only way it could have. You don’t  _ get  _ in trouble, you pull people  _ out _ of it. So if  _ you  _ got in trouble, it’s on you. Welcome to the club, brother!” he smiled, holding his arms out.

But taunting is only fun when followed by a response. And he wasn’t going to get one. Ever.

So all that pathetic attempt to make himself feel better got him was more frustration.

“You know, this wouldn’t have happened if you lived in the forest like the rest of us. Sure, there’s a chance you may fall into a ravine, but at least that would be the end of it. Two seconds and that’s that.” he chuckled. 

Of course, no one answered. He would have had bigger problems if someone had. Still, irritation kept biting at his ribs, burning and boiling up.

“You made your own choices and w- and I respected them. Look where those choices got you, hm? Congratulations. And goodbye.”

He decided to leave. Actually, he’d decided to leave more or less the exact second he’d stepped into the room, but up until that moment his legs had refused to follow through with that command. 

As he was leaving he noticed something gleaming under the table. 

A little black triangle, made of painted wood. A very,  _ very _ familiar piece of jewelry. 

“Ah, so that’s where she lost it.” he murmured, kneeling beside the table. His hand brushed against a massive chemical burn, poorly concealed under a stack of unreadable papers. There was so much in that place. Someone was missing.

The little wooden triangle had a faded sheen to it. Yeah, that thing was old. Almost thirty years old, in fact. It used to have a mirror-like shine that one could see their reflection in.

He briefly considered keeping the earring for the purpose of returning it to its rightful owner. Then he remembered he and his sister weren’t exactly on speaking terms at that moment. He also realized that leaving the triangle there may have been a perfectly intentional move on her part. An offering, or a memento.

That was actually not a bad idea.

Considering he was quite determined to never enter that room again, leaving something behind as a subtle farewell didn't sound like a bad plan. No one would ever know. 

Quietly, he reached for one of his braids. The bead at the end of it was starting to come off and he would have had to redo it anyway.

Scissors weren't too hard to find in a laboratory, as messy as it was.

He  _ casually _ placed the bead under the table, a few feet away from the earring.

"I'm sorry it came to this, brother." he murmured, as he stepped out of the lab.

Then he was gone, and it was silent again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How to powerwalk through all five stages of grief: a guide by Hector  
> He's a little less chill.  
> It's okay, we love him anyway. :3
> 
> Firefly said "Hector would turn every place into a zoo if no one stopped him" and I said "hmm, continue"
> 
> Last chapter comes out Thursday (gee I wonder what it could be about-)
> 
> Please leave a comment because I have no idea what I'm doing right and wrong in life :D  
> -Cass


	3. Quirin

It had become apparent pretty quickly, when he finally got to talk to his son, that the kid thought he’d been unconscious the whole time. That was inaccurate, but he wasn't going to tell him that.

He had lost track of time, of course. When you’re stuck in the same position for… he wasn’t quite sure how long but it wasn’t a few minutes, that was for sure, you don’t exactly have anything to tell you what time and day it is. He had closed his eyes just before the amber had reached them, so he had no real concept of light and dark or of who was around him at any given time. It was exhausting. After a while, his sense of touch had gone too. The amber felt cold around his skin: it didn’t seem to absorb heat at all, but rather isolate it. He had some kind of lease around his right arm, but it was a matter of millimeters. It was not enough, he realized, to give anyone a sign that he was still alive in there. All that considered, he didn’t know whether to be grateful or upset by the only sense he had left: his hearing. It was muffled and wonky and weird, but he could hear. While that gave him some form of connection to the outside world, it was limited to the sounds in the one room he could hear.

That was why he was so grateful for Varian.

The kid liked to talk, he’d always known, but he’d never thought he’d be so grateful for the continuous stream of consciousness he so often vocalized.

He talked about his day, his feelings, his wacky science theories, and he  _ never shut up _ .

That might sound annoying, but it was something that helped the both of them cope. Varian needed to talk to relieve the endless stream of thoughts that buzzed in his head like flies, Quirin needed the sound of his voice and whatever news he could give him about what was happening.

He'd started getting worried even before being completely encased. Varian, reckless as ever in his panic, had run out, right into the icy arms of a blizzard that promised to be the worst the kingdom had  _ ever _ seen. The rocks were still springing from the ground and had stabbed through more than a few things in their relentless growth. To say that he had been concerned about them impaling some _ one _ would be a great understatement. People had already been injured and narrowly avoided being caught in the rocks' paths before. Varian was probably inattentive in his panicked state. The combination did not bode well for him.

Then he'd come back, unharmed. If he could have sighed in relief, he would have; if only he could have breathed any deeper than the few millimetres of movement his chest allowed, that is. He would have loved to be able to tell Varian to  _ never do that again _ or something, but unfortunately that was impossible too, what with the massive piece of amber that held his jaw firmly in place.

The worst had yet to come.

Hearing the exact moment Varian realized he was too late, the exact moment he broke down crying, the exact moment his attitude changed from heartbroken to vengeful, that could've been the worst. 

It wasn't.

Because back then, he still clung to the hope that it was just a brief manifestation of his grief, a passing anger brought on to conceal or cope with the immense sadness he could hear in his voice.

He should've known better.

Varian didn't get over it. He never did. His rage turned to a terrifying calm that was so utterly unfamiliar to him.

_ This isn't you _ , he kept thinking, listening to the sound of boiling chemicals and of plans being made and then tossed out. 

It just wasn't right!

This didn't feel like the same kid who had been living under his roof for fourteen years.

At one point, he started to doubt that the voice belonged to Varian at all. Unfortunately, while that would've been a more comfortable solution, it was simply irrational. Whereas, the more he thought of his son's sudden change in attitude, the more it made sense. Varian relayed the whole story to him, day by day, and he realized. No one had helped him. Not during the storm, not after, not at that moment. No one had come for him after he'd crossed a raging snowstorm to beg for help. To put it simply, no one had helped him through the worst of his grief, so he hadn't processed it. 

Realizing that was a stab in the heart, but it wasn't the worst, oh no. 

Varian could still come back from that, he kept telling himself. He had always been an imaginative kid. Picturing and planning revenges that would never happen was normal for children, or so he'd been told by other parents.

What those other parents had failed to account for was just how  _ determined _ Varian could be. At fourteen years old, he utterly refused to even think about sleeping or eating until he'd finished whatever he was working on. He was self-destructive.

That hurt to realize, but even that wasn't the worst.

No, the worst finally came after Varian enacted his revenge. His final plan.

At that moment, he  _ really _ wished he could see what was happening. It was difficult to piece together from where he stood.

One thing he noticed immediately though, one thing that made his blood curl, was the queen's voice. 

She was in the room. Nothing wrong with that, right? Except this was no tea party. All she was saying were things along the lines of  _ let me go _ and  _ stop this plan _ . 

That was the worst.

The moment his blood froze into an icy spike in his heart.

_ Varian, what are you doing? _

If there had been hope before, it was gone. That was the point of no return.

Making plans was one thing, but kidnapping the queen was another thing entirely.

He knew Frederic fairly well. He knew  _ very _ well that he could be fiercely protective sometimes, and his idiot of a child had just kidnapped his wife.

He wouldn't be forgiven.

He wouldn't get a free pass just because he was his son, either.

He was in trouble bigger than he could ever hope to undo and that knowledge, that was by far the worst.

Quirin wasn't quite sure what was happening when the deafening clank of metal outside finally ceased, but to say he feared the worst when he didn't hear from Varian after that would be a great understatement.

If grief experienced in the solitude of a now half empty bedroom was debilitating, it became cripplingly maddening in the absence of all but one of his senses and the complete and utter helplessness he should have been used to by then (he wasn't). Sure, maybe Varian had just gotten help, but that was a hope he wasn't willing to hold on to. Expecting the best had never worked out for him. Expecting the worst and hoping for the best worked much better, but even the vague hope flickered out soon enough. With no way to take out his frustration, to speak, punch that damned amber or even just shed a tear, the fear grew worse. It crippled his every thought, systematically destroying every hope until there was nothing but grief and despair left in his heart. Breathing began to hurt. His lungs burned with unspoken words and screams. 

No one was going to get him out of there.

Even if they did, what was the point? 

So that he could finally give them a piece of his mind about the way they'd been dismissed and left behind?

No, not really.

So that he could tell Varian what he'd been meaning to tell him all along?

No. Even if he was still alive and well, his courage faltered.

He hoped the air in that cramped lab would run out eventually and break this endless cycle.

He'd heard voices come and go, rarely.

Clanging and banging of various objects against his strange prison. Muffled by the amber.

It was indifferent to him. The sooner those people gave up, the better for them. 

Eventually, they did. 

But then something happened. Something completely unexpected. They were just more voices, in actuality; the first voice, though, was one he hadn't heard in over thirteen years. Among the sickly yellow, he felt, rather than saw, a hint of red; comforting red, warm red.

"I did what I could." she'd said. 

He believed her. 

She went on to ask him how he'd managed to get himself caught in that situation. She took a guess, and it was correct, because of course it was. 

She told him that Varian was alive. He would have loved to be able to speak, just to thank her, sincerely, for the enormous and crushing weight she'd lifted off his chest. She apologized for how they’d left things off, and he answered her, if only in his mind:  _ I’m not angry, I was never angry with you. _

Then she left, and it was silent again.

The second voice was unmistakable and equally ancient acquaintance. Lime green like his eyes, so similar to some of the bottles scattered around the lab, from powerful acids to simple cleaning concoctions.

He was mocking him, but there was no real punch to his words. 

"Look where these choices got you." he'd said, and he couldn't say he disagreed. But did he regret settling down there? Did he regret Enya's warm smile when he told her he loved her? Varian's excited rambling, the spark of pure delight in his blue eyes when he recounted his experiments? No. Never, really. 

He heard him walk around, but he didn’t speak much after that and left soon after. He could’ve sworn he’d heard him apologize at one point, for some reason. The rest was all mocking or anger.

Still, it was nice to hear his voice again. Even if all he did was criticize his life choices.

And then he left, and it was silent again.

For a  _ very _ long time.

All of that was why, when things had finally started looking up, he had long since given up on his plans for when he got out.

That is to say, he was completely unprepared for the moment he finally heard that familiar voice again. Not the silence of the past few who-knows-what, not the cold and ruthless voice that had been scheming in the lab, but his goofy, kind, permanently nervous child. Another voice, too, much less familiar but just as reassuring. She wasn't there to hurt either of them. She was there to help. This time, of her own volition.

The last thing he heard before he was freed wasn't her melodic singing voice. It was the deafening screech of the amber melting, right in his ear, because that wasn't just amber; it was alive, it was older by far than any of them, and it wasn't happy that its prey was getting away. 

Hearing sounds as they were was a feeling he didn't know he would miss so much.

They asked him a few times if he'd felt anything in there. Their faces were tense, sometimes guilty. And Varian, poor boy, looked like he was ready to cry.

"Just like sleeping." he lied, and they didn’t ask again.

He found two things under the table that did not belong to either of them. A triangular earring, painted a faded black, and a little wooden bead with a short strand of coarse black hair still attached to it. 

He put them in a drawer, initially. Then, things started getting crazier and he picked up the habit to carry them around with him.

He would return them eventually, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Before Firefly worked the Inspiration Magic, this chapter was going to be a one-shot and it was a lot shorter.  
> Everyone thank Firefly #2.
> 
> Speaking of which, uh... I'm... sorry? But come on, you knew I had angst stacked away in my drawer :,)  
> At this point me and firefly_skies are just subconsciously trying to one-up each other in angst. :/
> 
> Anywho, leave a comment because angst is painful to write :,)  
> Thank you for reading
> 
> -Cass


End file.
